She got out at a townhouse in the East Sixties. I switched on the Off Duty light and headed for a phone booth. Using her dime I called Tommy, and he said, “I thought I’d hear from you. That was some hunch.”
It sure was. At twenty-two to one, that hunch was going to bring back eight hundred and five dollars.
I said, “What does it pay?”
“Twenty-seven to one,” he said.
“Twenty-seven?”
“That’s right.”
“How much is that?”
“Nine eighty,” he said. “Less the half yard you owe me, that’s nine thirty.”
Nine hundred and thirty dollars. Almost a thousand dollars! I was rich!
I said, “I’ll be over around six, is that okay?”
“Sure,” he said.
I couldn’t turn the cab in before five, so I headed uptown to try to stay out of the midtown crush, so naturally I got flagged down right away by somebody wanting to go to the PanAm Building. What with one thing and another, it was twenty after five before I clocked out at the garage over on Eleventh Avenue. I immediately became a fare myself, hailing a cab for one of the first times in my life, and headed down to Tommy’s apartment on West 46th Street between Ninth and Tenth. I rang the bell, but there was a woman coming out with a baby carriage, so I didn’t have to wait for the buzz. I held the door for the woman and went on in. There still hadn’t been any buzz when I got into the elevator.
He must have heard the bell, though, because the door was partly open when I got to the fourth floor. I pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the hall and said, “Tommy? It’s me, Chet.”
Nothing.
The hall light was on. I left the front door partly open like before and walked down the hall looking into the rooms as I went by. Kitchen, then bathroom, then bedroom, all lit up and all empty. The living room was down at the end of the hall.
I went into the living room and Tommy was lying on his back on the rug, arms spread out. There was blood all over the place. He looked like he’d been shot in the chest with antiaircraft guns.
“Holy Christ,” I said.
2
I was on the phone in the kitchen, trying to call the cops, when Tommy’s wife came in with a grocery bag in her arms. She’s a short and skinny woman with a sharp nose and a general look of disapproval.
She came to the kitchen doorway, saw me, and said, “What’s up?”
“There’s been an accident,” I said. I knew it wasn’t an accident, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And at just that minute the police answered, so I said into the phone, “I want to report a—Wait a second, will you?”
The cop said, “You want to report what?”
I put my hand over the mouthpiece and said to Tommy’s wife, “Don’t go into the living room.”
She looked toward the living room, frowning, then came in and put the bag down on the counter. “Why not?”
The cop was saying, “Hello? Hello?”
“Just a second,” I told him, and said to Tommy’s wife, “Because Tommy’s in there, and he doesn’t look good.”
She took a quick step back toward the hall. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Don’t go there,” I said. “Please.”
“What’s the matter, Chester?” she said. “For God’s sake, will you tell me?”
The cop was still yammering in my ear. I said to Tommy’s wife, “He’s dead,” and then to the cop I said, “I want to report a murder.”
She was gone, running for the living room. The cop was asking me my name and the address. I said, “Listen, I don’t have much time. The address is 417 West 46th Street, apartment 4-C.”
“And your name?”
Tommy’s wife began to scream.
“I’ve got a hysterical lady here,” I said.
“Sir,” said the cop, as though it was a word in a foreign language, “I need your name.”
Tommy’s wife screamed again.
“Do you hear that?” I said. I held the phone toward the kitchen doorway, then pulled it back and said, “Did you hear it?”
“I hear it, sir,” he said. “Just give me your name, please. I will have officers dispatched to the scene.”
“That’s good,” I said, and Tommy’s wife came running into the kitchen, wild-eyed. Her hands were red. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “What happened?”
“My name is Chester Conway,” I said.
The cop said, “What was that?”
Tommy’s wife grabbed me by the front of my jacket. It’s a zip-up jacket, dark blue, two pockets, it’s comfortable for driving the cab all day in the winter. “What did you do?” she screamed.
I said to the cop, “Wait a second,” and put the phone down. Tommy’s wife was leaning forward to glare in my face, her hands on my chest, pushing me backward. I gave a step, saying, “Get hold of yourself. Please. I got to report this.”
All at once she let go of me, picked up the phone, and shouted into it, “Get off the line! I want to call the police!”
“That is the police,” I said.
She started clicking the phone at him. “Hang up!” she shouted. “Hang up, this is an emergency!”
“I’m supposed to slap you now,” I said. I tugged at her arm, trying to get her attention. “Hello? Listen, I’m supposed to slap you across the face now, because you’re hysterical. But I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to have to do that.”
She began violently to shake the phone, holding it out at arm’s length as though strangling it. “Will—you—get—off—the—line?”
I kept tugging her other arm. “That’s the police,” I said. “That’s the police.”
She flung the phone away all at once, so that it bounced off the wall. She yanked her arm away from me and went running out of the kitchen and out of the apartment. “Help!” I heard her in the hall. “Help! Police!”
I picked up the phone. “That was his wife,” I said. “She’s hysterical. I wish you’d hurry up and dispatch some officers.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “You were giving your name.”
“I guess I was,” I said. “It’s Chester Conway.” I spelled it.
He said, “Thank you, sir.” He read back my name and the address and I said he had them right and he said the officers would be dispatched to the scene at once. I hung up and noticed the phone was smeared with red from where Tommy’s wife had held it, so now my hand was smeared, too. Red and sticky. I went automatically to wipe my hand on my jacket, and discovered the front of my jacket was also red and sticky.
A heavyset man in an undershirt, with hair on his shoulders and a hammer in his hand, came into the kitchen, looking furious and determined and terrified, and said, “What’s going on here?”
“Somebody was killed,” I said. I felt he was blaming me, and I was afraid of his hammer. I gestured at the phone and said, “I just called the police. They’re on their way.”
He looked around on the floor. “Who was killed?”
“The man who lives here,” I said. “Tommy McKay. He’s in the living room.”
He took a step backward, as though to go to the living room and see, then suddenly got a crafty expression on his face and said, “You ain’t going anywhere.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m going to wait here for the police.”
“You’re damn right,” he said. He glanced at the kitchen clock, then back at me. “We’ll give them five minutes,” he said.
“I really did call,” I said.
A very fat woman in a flowered dress appeared behind him, putting her hands on his hairy shoulders, peeking past him at me. “What is it, Harry?” she said. “Who is he?”
“It’s okay,” Harry said. “Everything’s under control.”
“What’s that stuff on his jacket, Harry?” she asked.
“It’s blood,” I said.
The silence was suddenly full of echoes, like after hitting a gong. In it, I could plainl
y hear Harry swallow. Gulp. His eyes got brighter, and he took a tighter grip on the hammer.
We all stood there.
3
When the cops came in, everybody talked at once. They listened to Harry first, maybe because he was closest, maybe because he had the hammer, maybe because he had his wife talking with him, and then they told him to take his wife and his hammer and go back across the hall to his apartment and take care of the bereaved lady over there and they, the cops, would stop in a little later. Harry and his wife went away, looking puffed with pride and full of good citizenship, and the cops turned to me.
“I didn’t do it,” I said.
They looked surprised, and then suspicious. “Nobody said you did,” one of them pointed out.
“That guy was holding a hammer on me,” I said. “He thought I did it.”
“Why did he think so?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Tommy’s wife told him I did.”
“Why would she say a thing like that?”
“Because she was hysterical,” I said. “Besides, I don’t even know if she said it. Maybe it was because of the blood on my jacket.” I looked at my hand. “And on my hand.”
They looked at my jacket and my hand, and they stiffened up a little. But the one who did the talking was still soft-voiced when he said, “How did that happen?”
“Tommy’s wife grabbed me,” I said. “That’s when it got on my jacket. She’d gone in to look at Tommy, and I guess she touched him or something, and then she got it on me.”
“And the hand?”
“From the phone.” I pointed to it. “She was holding the phone.”
“Is she the one who called in the complaint?”
“No. I did.”
“You did. Who did Mrs. McKay call?”
“Nobody. She was hysterical, and she wanted to call the co—police, but I was already talking to them. It got kind of confusing.”
“I see.” They looked at one another, and the talking one said, “Where’s the body?”
“In the living room,” I said. I made a pointing gesture. “Down the hall to the end.”
“Show us.”
I didn’t want to go down there. “Well, it’s just—” I said, and then I saw what they meant. They wanted me with them. “Oh,” I said. “All right.”
We went down the hall to the living room, me in the lead, and Tommy was still there, spread out on the floor, sunny side up. With the yolk broken.
I’m sorry I thought that.
I stood to one side, and the cops looked. One of them said to me, “Use your phone?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s not mine.”
The phone was over by the windows, which looked out on the street. While the silent cop went over and made his call the other one said to me, “Why didn’t you use that phone there? Why the one in the kitchen?”
“I didn’t want to be in the same room with him,” I said. I was not looking at Tommy, but I could still see him out of the corner of my eye. “I still don’t,” I said.
He looked at me. “You going to be sick?”
“I don’t think so.”
He pointed near the hallway entrance. “Just wait there a minute,” he said.
“All right,” I said. I went over there and waited, looking down the hall toward the entrance. Behind me I could hear the cops talking together and talking on the phone, low murmur-ings. I wasn’t interested in making out the words.
After a couple minutes the talking cop and I went across the hall to Harry’s apartment. Harry seemed surprised to see me walking around free, surprised and somewhat indignant, as though he was being insulted in some obscure way. Tommy’s wife was lying on her back on a very lumpy sofa in an overcrowded and overheated living room. She had one forearm thrown over her face, and I saw she’d washed the blood off her hands.
The cop sat down on the coffee table and said softly, “Mrs. McKay?”
Without moving her arm so she could see him she said, “What?”
“Could I ask you a couple questions?” He was even more soft-voiced than before. A very nice corpse-side manner.
I said to Harry, “Can I use your bathroom, please?”
Harry frowned in instant distrust. He said to the cop, “Is it okay?”
The cop looked over his shoulder, nettled at the interruption. “Sure, sure,” he said, and went back to Tommy’s wife.
Harry’s wife, being polite because now I was a guest in her house, showed me to the bathroom. I shut the door with my clean hand, turned on the water in the sink, and washed my hands. Then I used a washcloth to try to wash off the front of my jacket. I got it pretty well, then rinsed the washcloth, dried my hands, and went back out to the living room.
The cop wasn’t alone any more. There were three plainclothesmen there, all with hats on their heads and their hands in their overcoat pockets. They looked at me, and the uniformed cop said, “He’s the one made the discovery.”
One of the plainclothesmen said, “I’ll take it.” He took his hands out of his pockets and came over to me, saying, “You Chester Conway?”
“Yes,” I said. In a corner I could see Harry and his wife both sitting in the same armchair, blinking at everything in eager curiosity. They’d happily given up the participant roles and drifted into their real thing, being spectators.
“I’m Detective Golderman,” the plainclothesman said. “Come along.”
Sensing Harry and his wife being disappointed that I wasn’t going to be questioned—grilled—in front of them, I followed Detective Golderman out and across the hall and into Tommy’s apartment. We went into the bedroom now, and I could hear murmuring in the living room. It sounded like a lot of men in there, a lot of activity.
Detective Golderman, notebook in hand, said, “Okay, Chester, tell me about it.”
I told him about it, that I’d called Tommy at four, that I’d said I’d be over at six, that when I got here I came into the building without his buzzing to let me in, that the apartment door was open, that I found him dead and started to call the police and his wife came in and everything got hysterical. When I was done, he said, “McKay was a friend of yours, is that right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Sort of a casual friend.”
“Why were you coming over today?”
“Just a visit,” I said. “Sometimes I come over when I quit work.”
“What do you do?”
“I drive a cab.”
“Could I see your license?”
“Sure.”
I handed it to him, and he compared my face with the picture and then handed it back, thanking me. Then he said, “Would you know any reason anybody would do a thing like that to your friend?”
“No,” I said. “Nobody.”
“He didn’t sound frightened or different in any way when you talked to him on the phone this afternoon?”
“No, sir. He didn’t sound any different from usual.”
“Whose idea was it you should come over at six?”
I had a problem there, since I didn’t feel I should tell a cop that my relationship with Tommy was customer to bookie, but on the other hand I felt very nervous making up lies. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Mine, I guess. We both decided, that’s all.”
“Was anybody else supposed to be here?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Hmm.” He seemed to think for a minute, and then said, “How did Tommy get along with his wife, do you know?”
“Fine,” I said. “As far as I know, fine.”
“You never knew them to argue.”
“Not around me.”
He nodded, then said, “What’s your home address, Chester?”
“8344 169th Place, Jamaica, Queens.”
He wrote it down in a notebook. “We’ll probably be getting in touch with you,” he said.
“You mean I can go now?”
“Why not?” And he turned around and walked out of the bedroom as though I’d ceased to
exist.
I followed him out. He turned right, toward the living room, and I went the other way. I went out to the street, which seemed much colder now, and walked over to Eighth Avenue, where I got my subway to go home. I sat in the train thinking about things, and I was all the way to Woodhaven Boulevard before it occurred to me I hadn’t collected my nine hundred thirty dollars.
4
My father had papers all over the dining-room table again. He had the adding machine out, ballpoint pens scattered here and there, and lots of crumpled sheets of paper on the floor around his chair. When he’s thinking hard he tends to scratch his face, scratching his nose or his chin or his forehead, and frequently he forgets he’s holding a ballpoint pen at the time, so after a session at the dining-room table he winds up looking like the paper they use for dollar bills, with little blue lines an inch or so long wig-wagging all over his face.
“I’m late,” I pointed out. “It’s after seven.”
My father looked at me in that out-of-focus way he has when his mind is full of numbers. Pointing a pen at me he said, “The question is, are you going to have any children?”
“Not right away,” I said. “Did you put anything on for dinner?”
“If you would just get married,” he said, “it would make it simpler for me to figure these things out.”
“I’m sure it would,” I said. “Maybe I will someday. What about dinner?”
He glared at me, meaning I’d broken his train of thought. “Dinner? What time is it?”
“After seven.”
He frowned and pulled out his pocketwatch and lowered his brows at it. “You’re late,” he said. “Where’ve you been?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Did you start dinner?”
“I got involved in this,” he said, waving his hands vaguely at all the paperwork. “Another insurance man came by today.”
“A new one?”
“Same old stuff, though,” my father said. He threw the pen on the table in disgust. “The math still works out against me.”
“Well,” I said, “they’ve got computers.” I went out to the kitchen and got out two turkey TV dinners, put them in the oven, lit the oven.
Somebody Owes Me Money Page 2
